Scottish Myths and Legends by Rodger Moffet, Amanda Moffet, Donald Cuthill, Tom Moss

enemy on the other.
     
     
The Borderer became the Border Reiver. His dominance of the English Scottish Border lands would last for centuries as feud, blood-feud, murder, death and extortion and blackmail would become the norm; a result of allegiance to the only people he could trust – his clan or family. It seemed, for centuries, that there was no answer to his disreputable activities.
     
     
In 1603, the Union of the two crowns of England and Scotland would eventually bring a form of peace to a troubled land. The two nations would be united under one King, James V1 of Scotland and l of England. The Border Line from the Solway Firth in the west to the North Sea at Berwick in the east would still exist, indeed it still does to this day, but it would no longer divide two peoples.
     
     
The Border country became the Middle Shires of a new United Kingdom.
     
     
The Border Reivers were summarily executed, transported to the bogs of Roscommon in Ireland or conscripted to the protestant Low Countries in their fight against catholic Spain. They would slowly disappear from the landscape.
     
It would take another century but peace would eventually reign in the lands of the Scottish English Border.

James V of Scotland and a Border Widow
     
By Tom Moss
     
In 1530 James V, king of Scotland, was a mere lad of seventeen. Freed at last from the clutches of those men who endeavoured to reign in his stead, in his minority, he was determined to prove that he was the real power in Scotland.
     
One area where allegiance to the clan and its leader came before any deference to royal power was the Scottish Border country. There the clans were a law unto themselves, particularly troublesome and unruly.
     
     
Accordingly he moved south from his seat in Edinburgh intent on doling out justice and punishment to those who were of particular notoriety. It is said he had six thousand armed followers.
     
     
The history of Johnnie Armstrong of Gilnockie, a power in the Scottish Borders, is well recorded. By subterfuge, some say as the result of a 'loving letter' he was encouraged to wait upon the king at Carlenrig, south of the Borders town of Hawick. There James, incensed by the apparent affluence of the fierce Border Reiver and his twenty-four followers, ordered their execution without trial. Johhnie had fallen into a trap from which there was no way out. He pleaded with the rash, impetuous youth of a king but to no avail. He resigned himself to his fate but not before saying in the Border Ballad which tells his story:-
     
     
'To seek hot water beneath cold ice,
     
Surely it is a great folly-
     
I have asked grace at a graceless face,
     
But there is none for my men and me!'
     
     
He and twenty-three of his followers were strung up on the spot. The twenty-fourth was burned alive in vengeance for the burning of a poor women and her son in which he was the instigator.
     
     
In time, when maturity replaced the rashness and callowness of youth, James would regret his actions at Carlenrig. He lost any allegiance the Armstrongs of Liddesdale had for the Scottish monarchy on that fateful day in July 1530. In 1542 at the rout of the Scottish army by the English at the Battle of Solway Moss, the Armstrongs withheld their support for the Scottish cause, even harassed the losers as the terrified remnants of the Scottish army fled the field of conflict and headed back north.
     
     
James died shortly afterwards. He was about thirty years old.
     
     
Before he arrived in Carlenrig in July 1530, James V was determined to mete out the royal justice against two other Border Reivers of particular re-known. One was Adam Scott of Tushielaw, known as the 'King of Thieves'. Not only did he reive both far and wide; he was feared for the way in which he summarily despatched his adversaries. He strung them up from the trees which surrounded his tower at Tushielaw.
     
     
He was soon apprehended by the army of James V, and, it is said, hanged from the